Bonney Odongo and Patrick Okino
21 February 2010
Kampala — Clinics to offer free treatment to people living with HIV/AIDS have been opened in Dokolo, Amolatar and Oyam districts.
The clinics were launched by the Northern Uganda Malaria, HIV/AIDS and Tuberculosis Programme (NUMAT).
They will also offer free testing of CD4 counts, support and provide encouragement to people living with HIV.
The clinics are Agwata Health Centre 111 in Dokolo, Itam in Amolatar and Agulurude in Oyam.
The head of NUMAT in Lango, Robert Opio, urged the communities to use the centres to know their status.
"People should utilise the centres by testing and establishing their HIV status," he said.
Opio warned couples against divorce after establishing that both of them were infected with HIV.
He made the appeal last week at the launch of Agwata Centre.
The Dokolo district health educator, Judith Alyek, said HIV prevalence in the district stands at 9.4%, which means 14,000 people out of 162,100 of the population are infected with the disease.
Alyek said Agwata clinic has the largest number of moher-to-child transmission cases' with 8.5% of pregnant mothers testing positive for HIV/AIDS.
She also noted that the turn up of men in the district for HIV testing was still low.
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